ADAM B. SUMMERS: California not quite as corrupt as rest of U.S.?

First, the bad news: California earned a lowly grade of C-minus in a recent analysis of state governments’ accountability and transparency. The good news? That still ranks tied for second (with Connecticut), trailing only Alaska, which received a C. While we are no Third World banana republic, this does not speak well of states’ abilities to prevent and root out corruption.

The 2015 State Integrity Investigation, published by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity, assessed the states in 13 categories, including Public Access to Information, Electoral Oversight, State Civil Service Management, Lobbying Disclosure, Ethics Enforcement Agencies and accountability of the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

California earned a failing grade in Public Access to Information because of the expensive and time-consuming legal process required to resolve disputes over requested information. It also received an “F” in Judicial Accountability “largely because the state has no system of evaluating judges’ performance or independent confirmation process system for trial court judges.”

Perhaps most puzzling were the areas where the Golden State scored the best. California received an “A” (ranking sixth overall), for example, in State Budget Processes. The Democrats’ one-party rule and the lowering of the threshold for passing a budget from a two-thirds supermajority to a simple majority in 2010 may have made it easier to spend other people’s money without opposition, but this is not necessarily a good thing.

Moreover, like the vast majority of states, California still utilizes line-item budgeting, where agency budgets are adjusted arbitrarily based on last year’s budget and how much political pull they have, rather than on how efficient and effective they are.

States such as Washington, Iowa and South Carolina have adopted performance-based budgeting, in which government activities are ranked in order of priority and effectiveness, and services are funded down the list until revenue runs out. Such a system is more rational, improves accountability and makes spending trade-offs more transparent. The California Performance Review Commission recommended this and other budget reforms in 2004, only to be ignored.

It is even more perplexing that California received an “A” (ranked second overall) in State Pension Fund Management. The state has racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities, in large part because the California Public Employees’ Retirement System erroneously promised in 1999 that significantly increasing benefits would be made up for by the fund’s stellar investment returns. Even ignoring this, however, CalPERS has been plagued by questions about its private equity investments and has a long history of making investment decisions based on political ideology, not market research.

The State Integrity Investigation acknowledged that the California Senate’s image has been tarnished by the arms trafficking, bribery, corruption and voter fraud scandals that forced out former senators Leland Yee, Roderick Wright and Ron Calderon and led to their convictions or indictment (Calderon is awaiting trial).

We would also add the scandal over Gov. Jerry Brown’s alleged abuse of state resources to research the potential for oil and gas on his private property and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s multiple scandals involving widespread cheating on Cal Fire academy tests and inexcusable behavior including sexual harassment, using a state-issued phone and vehicle to hook up with prostitutes and drinking on the job.

It is sad that a barely middling integrity grade still puts our state among the best in the nation. It is even more puzzling considering the numerous aforementioned scandals. When more than 10 percent of the state Senate majority caucus is indicted or convicted and forced to resign, yet California still scores relatively highly, it makes one wonder what is going on in the rest of the states.

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